no such thing as monsters
by Kira
Summary: Preseries. 'When I told dad when I was scared of the thing in my closet, he gave me a .45.'


**no such thing (as monsters)**  
by kira

_We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light._  
-- Plato

The room was all sharp angles of sterile white, boring and foreign like so many other rooms he'd stayed in. At least here he's been around long enough to have a few things on the ugly dresser; action figures, some comic books, books from school. Enough to distinguish his room from the others.

Little Sammy Winchester sat on the large bed, tiny amongst all the covers pooled around him. Back against the headboard, he held the blankets up around him with tiny fists, eyes glued to the closet.

There is something _in_ his closet.

Richie Anderson had been talking about creatures all day, pointing out all the monsters in the new comics he brought to school. How they thrived in the dark when kids slept. Truth is stranger than fiction, but Sammy's used to these kinds of stories coming true. So while other kids thought monsters didn't live in their closets, Sammy _knew_ they did.

The apartment settled around him, shooting him out of his bed and through his door in a flash.

Down the short hall through to the living room where hot white light greeted him. His dad was at the table, still dressed in greasy work clothes. He sat reading those old thick books Sammy's always been curious about, and sometimes, when Dad's out, he opens a few and starts reading. They're scary books, and Sammy believed that was why his father always looked so angry and frightened.

"Daddy!" Sammy cried, leaping up onto his father's lap. "There's a monster in my closet."

John Winchester smiled and adjusted Sammy in his lap. "What kind of monster?"

Sammy paused, and held out his hands, running them over the worn pages in his father's books.

"I don't know."

"Have you seen it?"

"I heard it."

His father pulled a thick book from the pile on the table and leafed through it. "What did it sound like?" he asked, eyes skimming over familiar pages.

"Big," Sammy replied. "It kind of rumbles."

John gave an mmmhmmm, his attention still on the book in front of him. He turned to a different section of the book and continued.

Sammy's eyes were on it with the same fever as his father. "What kind of book is this?"

The pages smelled musty with a hint of dirt; the edges were torn or marred, and here and there Sammy could see his dad's handwriting in the margins. As his dad flipped through the pages, he could see some pictures -- not many, though. That was okay -- Sammy was way past reading books with pictures.

"It's a monster book," John explained, running a hand over the page he'd finally settled on. "This page shows the kind that live in closets."

Sammy leaned over to get a better look at the page, head resting next to his father's, eyes wide with curiosity. There weren't many times Sammy could say he was hanging out alone with his dad -- Dean was always around, hovering -- but whenever he could, he always enjoyed it. His dad liked to read, just like him, and answered his questions without getting mad like other adults.

"Wow. There are a _lot_," Sammy commented. His knees were on his dad's, and he leaned over the book at a dangerous angle.

-

John smiled and wrapped an arm around his baby's waist to keep him from falling forward onto the table.

Moments like this, enjoyed in the calm of night, reminded John of _why_ he's doing this. His boys, his precious boys. The thought of them being attacked as their mother had, hurt because they were unprepared, frightened him. The loss of his family would ultimately destroy him. No. He had to prepare his boys.

But right now, there was only him and Sammy sitting at the table -- normal father and son.

Except for the subject matter.

"There are a lot of monsters," John replied, the reality of such a simple answer so much grander than the words used.

"So what's in my closet?"

There are two ways to handle such a situation, at least in John's mind. One is to tell Sammy there's nothing in his closet, that he shouldn't be afraid of the dark. That he's too old to let his imagination run away on him. 'Don't be afraid of the dark,' -- he can remember Mary comforting Dean night after night he had nightmares at three.

And it was because of Mary, because of what lurked in the dark that night, that John decided to take the other path. The crazy, altered path he's had his boys follow him down.

He picked a decidedly less-menacing monster and pointed to it. "Could be that one." Because one day, there _will_ be a monster lurking in the dark -- he's sure of it -- and starting young is the only way -- _oh, God!_ -- he'll be ready for it.

And while he prays each night to keep that day at bay, he knows, deep down, past that internal confliction that begs for him to just take Sammy back to bed, that he's powerless to stop it. He can teach and guide and hope, but that's the extent of his powers.

"So what do we do?" Sammy asked earnestly, wide eyes scanning the page. They stuttered over longer, foreign words he didn't understand until John closed the book.

"I think you're big enough to do this one alone," he told his youngest son, and motioned to the collection of guns sitting beyond the stack of books on a burgundy cleaning cloth. Laid out, smallest to largest, recently cleaned and checked in his methodical manner.

Sammy's eyes grew wide as his father selected one and held it out to him.

"If anything comes out of that closet, you shoot it with this, understand?"

"And then it won't be able to hurt me?" The gun looks huge in Sammy's small hands, and John has half a mind to take it back.

But there's no turning back, never has been.

So he nodded gravely. "You remember your lessons?"

"Yes, dad," Sammy said, rolling his eyes, a pesky habit picked up from his older brother. John pressed on, and Sammy's face twisted up. "I know it's not a toy."

The seriousness in his voice prematurely aged Sammy a few years; instead of a precocious nine year old, he became something more. A glimpse of what was yet to come?

It frightened John how old the gun made his baby look, frightened how satisfied and perhaps relieved he felt.

Then Sammy leapt from his father's lap and gave him a loose, unsure hug.

"Thanks, daddy," he said, and, silver gun in hand, ran off to his room.

John leaned over, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands. He stayed that way, hunched over the kitchen table crowded with books of demons and guns, until the image of Mary holding their youngest was burned firmly in his mind, replacing the haunting look in his son's eyes when he held the gun.

-

Sammy sat in the center of his bed, back pressed hard against the generic wooden headboard. The gun sat next to him atop the covers, the only piece of the room that didn't seem to fit. He sat with his eyes focused on the closet across from him, just _waiting_ for the monster to make another noise, any noise, so he could shoot it and get to sleep.

A floorboard squeaked outside his room.

Ready for anything, Sammy held up his new weapon --

"Hey, Sammy, relax!"

There's a huge difference between nine and thirteen. It's the difference between child and teenager, and at thirteen, Dean, like others his age, was beginning to feel he knew everything there was to know in the world.

To his younger brother, he always had.

"Where'd you get that?" he asked. It was a nightly ritual, whether Sammy was awake or not, for Dean to come in and check on him before heading off to bed himself.

Sammy put the gun down to point at the closet. "There's a monster in my closet."

That seemed to make sense to Dean, who scooted up to sit next to Sammy at the head of the bed.

"Tell you what," he said, gently easing the gun out of Sammy's grasp, "I'll take first watch and you get some sleep."

"Aren't you tired?"

"Me?" Dean asked, smirking. "Nah."

-

John watched from the doorway as Dean pulled the covers up over his brother and placed the gun on the nightstand before settling in for the night.


End file.
